


Chelsea Hotel No. 2

by pearypie



Series: the swinging sixties [1]
Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: 1960s, Beat Generation, Casual Sex, Cigarettes, Liquor, M/M, Memories, New York, alternative universe, historical figures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 15:55:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7647349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearypie/pseuds/pearypie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Those were the reasons, and that was New York/ We were running for the money and the flesh/ And that was called love, for the workers in song/ Probably still is for those of them left. - Leonard Cohen </p><p>1960s, beatnik era. </p><p>Sebastian's a writer without a muse. Ciel's a listless college student who wants to rebel. [Set against the backdrop of the infamous Chelsea Hotel and New York City herself]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chelsea Hotel No. 2

_I don’t meant to suggest/ That I loved you the best/ I can’t keep track of each fallen robin/ I remember you well at the Chelsea Hotel/ That’s all, I don’t even think of you that often._ — Leonard Cohen ‘Chelsea Hotel #2’

 

* * *

  

He smokes a Marlboro and watches the pale grey smoke permeate then fade in the dark spaciousness of his New York City loft. The only light filtering in comes from the brightly lit towers and neon billboards of the city that never sleeps, with occasional assistance from the silvery moon and her brigade of faint diamond stars. It’s a Tuesday and Sebastian has a meeting with Bobby Jack Daniels of the City Lights Bookstore tomorrow morning at nine AM. Why anyone would willingly wake up at such an ungodly hour is questionable at best but Sebastian’s always been something of a night owl.

Ciel claimed he was as well but the boy needed eleven hours of sleep just to function. A pampered, spoiled little scion who was out rebelling in New York City while mommy and daddy footed the bills.

He was amusing and Sebastian liked him. (But only when these statements were said in _this_ order. Ginsberg had been giving him shit about finding “that someone” for the past three months and Sebastian was beginning to wonder when _the_ Allen Ginsberg became so fucking sentimental.)

Another plume of smoke escapes Sebastian’s lips as he places his left arm on the back of the plush sofa he's sitting on, head leaning back and eyes closing in one graceful, fluid motion.

 

* * *

 

The Chelsea Hotel was a famous landmark in New York even though everyone knew the appeal came not from the architecture but the scandalous figures who frequented said establishment. It held a mystical, vicious undercurrent of duplicitous depravity—one moment it could be the epicenter of your stardom and the next, your last venue of choice before you were hurled into court for tax evasion. Both he and Ginsberg visited the place often enough to get their own guest rooms although Sebastian had been there longer. He’d briefly glimpsed the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas before he died of pneumonia in ’53 and had a scintillating affair with Andy Warhol’s best muse, Edie Sedgwick, just two years earlier in 1964.

Sebastian slept with whoever and whomever he liked but he held a special place in his pitch-black heart for Vogue’s ‘It Girl’. He liked her wide, falsely innocent Bambi eyes (starred with false lashes that brushed against Sebastian’s cheekbones whenever they kissed) along with her dimpled smile and cherubic face. He liked her silver spray painted hair and dangling black chandelier earrings (during month 2 of their 4 month liaison together, he’d purchased Cartier ones for her in a fit of misbegotten affection) as well as her all too pretentious past. A member of the Bostonian Brahmin, Edie Sedgwick was an heiress with money to burn and blood so blue it ran cobalt through her veins.

He adored her sophistication and childlike disposition to the point where an open invitation to his apartment was offered. A part of him always hated Warhol for taking Edie away from him but both he and the rest of the world knew that if he’d wanted Edie badly enough, he would’ve kept her, by hook or by crook. Whatever the case, Sebastian hardly ever saw the enthralling Bostonian muse these days; Bob Neuwirth made sure of that—and so did her endless list of prescription pills and barbiturates. If she didn’t end up like Marilyn Monroe then Sebastian would pity the tragic comet fall that was Edie Sedgwick.

Coincidentally, he was also in between bed partners at the moment and bored out of his mind with publicity. Both he and Ginsberg were working on individual books and they drank often enough to give legitimacy to their claims. Vodka soaked nights, hazy with cigarette smoke and the muted honks and sounds of New York City while they laid on the roof of Sebastian’s apartment building. It was approaching September but the east coast was still warm enough to fall asleep outdoors—at least for another two or three weeks.

Lighting another Marlboro, Sebastian walked to the balcony of his hotel room and noted, with faint displeasure, the heavy grey sky and stifling heat. It was half past two and New York, like the tempestuous mistress she was, sought to punish her residents with a sudden heatwave of uncomfortably humid proportions. The cacophony of taxis, mad men, horns, whistles, chatter, and monotony bored him, fully and completely. Briefly, he returned inside for a glass and scotch and walked back out to the balcony again, lazily eyeing the various passerby’s of life and normalcy.

The Coca-Cola sign had yielded some inspiration though it was nothing compared to his debut novel, one even classical authors had praised as _a work of modern art._ He’d already received five offers from 20th Century Fox alone for the book rights and another eight from various other studios, with MGM supplying the pushiest agent Sebastian ever had the displeasure to dine with. A balding, blubber necked fellow of 40-something who wore a constricting flannel suit and monstrously ugly department store wristwatch. He suggested Elizabeth Taylor as the leading lady and Sebastian all but laughed at the absurdity of it all—his female protagonist was _blonde,_ didn’t the man _know_? 

Stepping back inside, he disposed of his cigarette in a glass ashtray and looked at his typewriter with a faint hint of disdain. Editors liked them but Sebastian had always preferred the ageless quality of pen against paper; his calligraphy was beautiful—even to his own eyes—and he found that language flowed so much better when one wasn’t clacking away on metal keys with badly printed letters on them.

It was only the shrill ring of the telephone that saved the typewriter from certain doom.

“Michaelis.”

“You son of a bitch.” Jack Kerouac’s voice, low and masculine, addressed him with thinly suppressed amusement from the other line. “Fuck you. I’ve been trying to reach you for four hours, you ungrateful bastard. Did you have a stroke or were you too busy fucking your latest east coast socialite?”

“I had the phone unplugged.”

Kerouac snorted. “That answer sounds as dry and pitiful as a lone glass of distilled gin during Prohibition.”

Sebastian smirked and lit another cigarette. “What do you want, Jack?”

“Oh nothing much. Just in the city and bored out of my mind.” He paused. “I also need to get rip roaring drunk before my next meeting.”

“With who, Ali Khan?”

“I ain’t Rita Hayworth, Michaelis. Sorry to disappoint you and your dick.”

“Must you be so crude?”

“See this is why I hate it when you dance with those prissy bitches. You end up talking just like them.”

“This is how I always conduct myself. Verbally at least. You ought to try it sometime. Perhaps then your nights wouldn’t be so coldly disappointing.”

“Vicious.” Jack Kerouac, professional drinker, chuckled. “If you wanna try and ah, _drown_ me in—the fuck you call it again? _Academia_? Whatever the fuck it is, meet me at the Andaz on Fifth in half an hour and then you can smother me with your superiority.”

Sebastian lifted the cigarette from his mouth, eyes flittering between his desk and the door for half a second before conceding. _Why not._

“Alright.”

“Great. Oh and Michaelis?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t fuck the barmaid this time.”

 

* * *

 

The amber hued intimacy of the Andaz bar secured a feeling of complete and total secrecy even while patrons were about two feet away from one another. It held a laissez-faire attitude about anything and everything. That was probably why writers like Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs liked it so much. It was an upscale beatnik kitchen situated right on Fifth Avenue, with walnut wood and closeted intimacy.

Sebastian took a seat at the dimly lit bar, carnelian eyes scrutinizing his scotch while his mind was a million miles away. 

“Ay—bartender! Whisky, neat.” Jack Kerouac, author of _On the Road_ and  _Big Sur_ , called out from behind Sebastian. With his bold and brash demeanor and handsome Hollywood star face, it was a wonder why Jack hadn’t married some rich widow already. This was, after all, New York. 

He took a seat next to Sebastian, blasé and forward as ever. “You look like shit, Michealis.”

“No.” Sebastian corrected. “I don’t.”

“Alright, so you don’t.” Jack’s Bostonian accent, while apparent, thickened. _He’s already halfway drunk,_ Sebastian mused with a faint smirk. “The fuck you doing at the Chelsea anyway?”

“Writing.”

Jack’s whisky arrived, accompanied by a nervous bartender in white and a plate of miscellaneous bar snacks.

“I’m working on a new novel.”

“You’re a rich man already. Retire to Paris and say goodbye to this town. Why bother anymore?”

“I’d ask you the same question but we both know you won’t be able to answer it.”

Jack selected a particularly fat black olive and shrugged. He'd never been the type of man to beat a dead horse. “Yeah, suppose so.” The burnt sienna atmosphere reminded him of Greenwich. “You know what you need? A good fuck. That’s when you get your best work done.” 

Sebastian remained silent.

“You miss her.”

“I find all your observations irreverent in this state of drunkenness.”

“Oh fuck _off_ , Michaelis. You fucking miss her. That Boston society gal—the Sedgwick girl! She left your ass and ripped a hole in your ego and now you’re reforming.” He took another sip. “It’s sad.”

“Coming from an alcoholic, I find that complimentary.” 

“What about that other fuck you were seeing? Tansy? Torrent?" He squinted. "Terrence?”

“Trancy.”

“Yeah sure. What about Trancy.”

“He’s in a mental hospital in Florida.”

“The fuck?" Jack's eyes widened with comedic disbelief. "Why?”

Sebastian lifted his own tumbler and gave him a mock salute. “For reasons undisclosed to me.” He downed the scotch in one languid, steady drink.

Jack grinned. “Bullshit.”

“An imbalanced mental state is not something I want to deal with.”

“Why not? All the best writers have muses who’re fucking crazy.”

 

* * *

  

Sebastian returned to the Chelsea Hotel to see a slate haired teenager leaning against the door of his hotel room, smoking a Lucky Strike, and looking utterly bored with life. Sebastian observed the boy with an almost delicate affinity that could have only come from one deeply in love—though he was anything but.

The boy—probably no older than 17 or so—was meringue skinned and beautifully frail, like a glass sculpture that belonged at the Amiens Cathedral in Picardy. Even standing at full height he couldn’t have been more than 5’6 and dressed in pressed shades of blue, this child was a work of art that Sebastian wanted to explore and devour.

When he was a foot away, the boy addressed him.

“Are you the manager?”

Sebastian fought back a smirk. “No. Are you locked out?”

“Sort of, yeah.” He held his cigarette between his index and middle finger, like a lost Gloria Swanson come back for revenge. “I’m meeting someone and the idiot’s late.”

“Shame.” Sebastian adjusted the collar of his black button down. “You're standing in front of my room.”

The boy turned around and between gazing at the honey wood door and Sebastian’s Cheshire grin, he chuckled to himself with a slight shake of his head. “Let me guess—you’re a writer.”

“And you’re not from around here.”

He glanced up, sapphire eyes—or _eye_ , Sebastian corrected—critical. “Do you say that to every new face you see in New York? Or is this just the shit pickup line college girls from around the corner fall for when they want to feel like something other than an unpaid whore?”

“I’m flattered you think I’m attractive enough to entice college girls.”

The corner of his mouth twitched up to resemble something of a half smile. “Once they're drunk, they don’t take much persuading.”

Sebastian studies him for half a minute longer and then decides _why not._ “You want to come in?” He pulls the room key from his trouser pocket and leans against the hotel’s paisley yellow wallpaper. “Midnight is a precarious hour for lone strangers.”

The hallway’s vintage yellow lights flicker, causing the boy to glance up with something akin to frustration—as if he couldn't understand why they would ever falter unless he commanded it. After a pause that has Sebastian recalling a few lines from Ginsberg's  _Howl_ , the boy takes a sharp inhale from his cigarette.

“How old are you?”

“34.”

“Younger than Ginsberg.”

“You know him?”

“I know _of_ him. My cousin loves his poems.”

“Another socialite?”

This time, the boy smiles. “Corporate finance major actually.”

“You or your cousin?”

“Me. Lizzy’s going to be our finest French diplomat since Eleanor Roosevelt—and twice as pretty.”

Sebastian chuckles, reaching into his back pocket to pull out a pack of Marlboro’s and a solid gold lighter. He can't remember who it's from. “How do you take your scotch?”

“I don't. I want a White Russian.” The boy takes two steps back, completely unperturbed by the closeness of their proximity. 

The lock opens with a click at the same time the boy announces his identity.

“I’m Ciel Phantomhive.”

 

* * *

 

After sex cigarettes were necessary so the entirety of Sebastian’s hotel room resembled (in almost exact detail) a Shangri-La whorehouse. Hazy, smoke filled, and sensuously depraved.

“Who’s the girl.” Ciel had his head on Sebastian’s stomach as he lay horizontally across the bed, naked as the day he was born.

The writer arched a brow, Marlboro between his thumb and forefinger. “What girl?” 

“The one you were trying to make love to before you realized she wasn’t here anymore.”

_Clever little brat._

“She had blood as blue as yours.”

“I’ll bet she did.”

They both release exhales of smoke.  _Crisp and stifling._

“Phantomhive." Sebastian muses. "English?”

“From my father’s side. My mother’s niece to the Kennedy’s and as a result I’ve had to suffer through summers in the Hamptons and Christmas overseas." Ciel is genuine with his complaints, one arm crossed over his chest and the other holding his cigarette. "They’re Irish for Christ’s sake, not Iranian. I can’t understand why every vacation is like the holy communion done over again.”

His accent—posh and sleek and cutting—familiarizes Sebastian.

“I’ll apologize on behalf of the American people.” There’s a sliver of dark humor in his voice but Ciel welcomes it.

“Don’t bother. It’s 1966. Not much else anyone can do.”

“Jacqueline Kennedy. Permanent widow?”

“Why? You want to marry her? Go ahead." The boy sneers. 

“No.” Sebastian leans over, earning a hiss of complaint from Ciel, as he extinguishes his smoke in a half-empty crystal ashtray. Turning back, he hauls Ciel onto his lap with a smile that is both promising and murderously alluring. “I want to fuck you again.” 

Ciel scowls. “Fucking stop holding me like a baby.” 

Sebastian ignores his protests and spreads Ciel’s legs so that his slim white thighs are now squeezing Sebastian's hips. With one smooth stroke, two fingers slip inside the younger man's pert white ass and the boy _moans,_ tilting his head and exposing his throat for Sebastian to attack with a barrage of teeth, tongue, and kisses.

“Is this your kink?” Ciel manages, gritting his teeth when Sebastian plunges into him again. “Fucking American aristocracy? Old money get you hard?”

The boy smells like fresh paper, ice mint, and cigarette smoke. His body is silk covered glass radiating warmth and want and  _fuck it,_ Sebastian’s pulsing erection presses against Ciel’s thigh and his lips trail from the boy’s neck down to his chest. With a gentle rock forward, Sebastian earns another moan from his very vocal partner as Ciel arches up, arms wrapping around Sebastian’s head so his chest can press against the older man's very talented mouth. 

He yelps when Sebastian’s teeth nip at the delicate skin there.

“There’s only one reason I’m fucking you and that has nothing to do with my past preferences.” Sebastian’s voice is controlled and carefully articulated; he doesn’t leave much room for argument when he presses a third finger inside Ciel and hits _that spot._

“Mmmh, _fuck_.” The boy hisses, roses blooming on his cheeks as he attempts to grind his pretty little cock against Sebastian’s lower stomach. “I need a little more than child’s play.”

“Well aren’t you a _doll._ ” Sebastian purrs, and easily lifts Ciel up with the palm of his head.

“What are you waiting for?” He pouts, lower lip plump and cherry pink.

Sebastian smirks. “Lubricant.”

“Oh, right. I mean—fuck.”

Sebastian watches as the boys hands—small and feminine—reach around the nightstand for that little tube of—

“Give it to me.”

Ciel’s fingers tremble but Sebastian is exuding a sort of imperial control he thoroughly dislikes and without thinking, Ciel presses an open mouthed kiss to the man’s pulse point, earning a sharp exhale that arouses them both. Ciel’s tongue is quick and wet and warm; there’s a hint of coolness in the aftermath of his kisses from the peppermint candies he’d eaten beforehand but Sebastian finds that likes the sensation—particularly while his fingers trail up and down his own cock until it glistens with lube. 

 _Burning flesh on fire._ Ciel’s slowly gyrating hips and the rhythm of their ceaseless motion—a rocking horse cadence between touch and sex—excites a blatant eroticism in Sebastian that is all at once clinical and all-consuming. Ciel’s body—slim and delicate, still dewy with youth—folds against Sebastian as if he’s trying to impress himself into his bones. The boy moves with him, thighs soft and moon pale and tight against Sebastian's hips. And then there's the soft whimpers and mews, something that contrasts—with almost bittersweet distinction—the harsh orders of _fuck me now_ that Ciel tends to spew in the midst of desire. 

With Ciel’s fingers weaving through the older man's hair and his relentlessly slow dance on Sebastian’s lap, the writer in him wants to preserve this moment in clear memory. How Ciel tastes and licks and scorches a path down his body, leaving skin slick and hot and yearning for intimacy that forces Sebastian to hold him closer, craving Ciel’s body and pressing bruised violets on the boy’s unblemished skin.

It's only when Ciel whispers _that question_ into Sebastian’s ear does he lose it. He forces Ciel’s hips higher and forcefully enters him as the boy cries out _more!_ and bites his lip to keep from whimpering as he struggles to accommodate Sebastian’s size. This is their second round and Ciel is still raw from their first encounter.

But Sebastian doesn’t care. He moves with a relentless pace that is almost cruel had it not been for the pleasure it afforded them both. Caught up in this boy and his vicious barbs, moving in him, skin on skin, until Sebastian can almost taste the forthcoming euphoria, he presses one hand against Ciel’s cock, fondling and touching until the boy comes in between his fingers. It’s only then that Sebastian allows himself to let go.

Ciel’s cheeks are flushed and his eyes are closed though Sebastian’s gaze has been focused on the Empire State building since the first kiss and everything thereafter.

 

* * *

 

_“You know what’s ridiculous?” Edie laughs, cigarette in one hand and a glass of scotch in the other. She’s dancing around Sebastian’s loft, naked and beautiful, with the smell of sex the only thing on her._

_Sebastian lies in bed, sated and content, watching her through half-lidded eyes. “I suspect you’ll tell me everything no matter what my answer is.”_

_She stops twirling for a moment to shoot him a wink. “Right you are, Mr. Michaelis.” And then her dancing resumes, arching gracefully through the room as if she’s making love to the night. “I saw a German woman the other day at the market. I wasn’t shopping for anything in particular but she was going to see a film. She told me it was a movie called Goldfinger and I immediately thought to myself, ‘this man must be wonderful at what he does if he’s earned a nickname after my favorite transition metal.’ So I followed her to the theater and the boy out front was sweet enough to let me pass without a ticket. I then got to see this film with a very handsome English fellow named James Bond and I wondered, ‘if I bought my Sebastian a pair of handcuffs and a white suit jacket, would he tie me to the bed and threaten me with denial until I begged him to fuck me?’”_

_She turned on him then, eyes wide and soulfully bright. “So?" She giggles. "Would you?”_

_Sebastian’s smile is half a smirk and half genuine—and it’s truer than anything he’s ever revealed. “That depends.”_

_Edie pouts. “On what?”_

_“On whether or not you want to be able to stand tomorrow morning.”_

 

* * *

 

Sebastian fucks Ciel against a wall and then on his kitchen table at around 10 AM before the younger man says he’s got to go.

“I go to university around here.” He says, fixing his hair in the reflection of a glass window.

“Here as in New York or here as in Boston?”

“Neither.” He smirks. “Princeton.”

Sebastian exhales a plume of smoke. “Fine school.”

He shrugs. “My dad thought so.”

Almost as soon as the words leave his lips, a strange lull settles in between them. Sebastian doesn't care to acknowledge it and continues smoking. Ciel's fingers pause their stroking motion and he opens his mouth, as if ready to address something entirely different, but, with almost imperceptible hesitation, he turns back around. Standing there, against the fresh rays of dawn, Ciel looks milk white and beautiful. 

“See you.” He says without so much as a wave.

Sebastian opens the door. “Enjoy Princeton.”

And Ciel Phantomhive disappears down the paisley yellow hallway, Marlboro between his lips.

 

* * *

 

Reclining his head against the sofa’s backrest, Sebastian opens his eyes to see a faint stream of pink coming up above the New York horizon line. His Breguet watch reads 5 AM and Sebastian replaces his cigarette with a sip of scotch, single malt.

Bobby should have the first completed draft of _The Chelsea Hotel_ by 9 AM today.

**Author's Note:**

> \- Bob Neuwirth: an American folk singer who really did date Edie Sedgwick. 
> 
> \- "lost Gloria Swanson" ... a 1920s starlet, Swanson played the infamous aging femme fatale Norma Desmond in the 1950 Billy Wilder hit, 'Sunset Blvd.' (The film is responsible for the now iconic line of "I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille.") 
> 
> \- "paisley yellow wallpaper" ... refers to Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story 'The Yellow Wall-paper' about a woman who descends into madness after the mechanizations of her husband. 
> 
> A/N: Inspired by Leonard Cohen’s song of the same name. I really like seeing Ciel and Sebastian in the 60s, I dunno why. (Oh and for all those curious—the writers and artists I mention are/were real people. Edie Sedgwick is also a favorite vintage babe of mine; she inspired Bob Dylan’s song ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ and really was the muse of Andy Warhol and countless others. Google her pic—she’s gorgeous.) 
> 
> This is the first time I've ever written in this style and I would love to hear your thoughts on it ^^


End file.
